It’s very simple website – the text on the homepage makes it clear to someone unfamiliar with the church why it exists, and how they can get in touch, or get involved.
The navigation system is interesting – clicking on any highlighted text expands the text in the body of the page:
This site offers some guidance to smaller churches, who recognise the need to have a website, but don’t need all the bells and whistles that websites of larger churches often have.
I’ve written on more than a few occasions about making it easy for people to contact your church (for example: ‘Don’t make contact painful’).
I’m reminded yet again of how difficult many organisations (not just churches) make it for potential customers (or visitors) to get in touch with them. We need to continually review our processes to remove any obstacles in the way of people getting in touch with us. The lower the barrier to contact, the more people who can get in contact. It’s basic stuff, but even large organisations often don’t get this.
Here’s an experience I had earlier this week in my other job – working as a social media specialist.
I wanted to get in touch with a company that specialised in developing tools to integrate social media and customer service. I clicked on the link to email them on their website:
I then emailed the organisation, asking why it was necessary to have so many mandatory fields – especially asking for the revenue of my organisation. They responded:
Hi Steven.
…The reason that we ask for revenue is for general information for us. We inquire is to see where we stand as far as industries and sizes for the majority of our clients, this information is kept as internal knowledge…
I wrote back:
Hi Jill,
I’m doing some research into products our clients can use to integrate social media with their customer service operations. To be honest, I thought the number of required fields was prohibitive – the less fields, the easier it is for potential customers to get in touch. I’d suggest that this additional information could be collected at a later date – rather than requiring it for the first time a potential customer gets in touch…
I didn’t hear back from Jill.
I received an email in my inbox today from the organisation I’d been dealing with. At first glance, I thought it was from Jill – it said:
Today the customer is in control. Customer relationships used to be managed on your terms. Not anymore. It’s time to focus on Customer Experience (CX). View the CX Video Now!
The irony! I hadn’t heard back from the customer service rep about being forced to provide so much information, instead I had receive an automated email message explaining that the customer is in control!
The customer should be, but very often they aren’t.
The demographic targeting tools of Facebook mean that ads can be displayed to niche audiences – for example, Christians. Read more about targeting your ads on Facebook here.
Alpha Australia is advertising to Christians – this ad appeared when I was browsing Facebook recently:
I remember being in a debate, via Twitter, with an atheist. During the debate he mentioned an author I hadn’t heard of. He sent me a link from a website – Let Me Google That For You (click here for an example – Dawkins wasn’t the author in question, but I use him by way of example!).
This website serves a satirical purpose – it’s a place to direct others when they ask you a question that you think they could easily find the answer to online. A custom link sends the user to a page where they watch the search term being typed in for them – and then the link to ‘Google Search’ is clicked. Beneath the search box is the message ‘Was that so hard?’. Ouch!
Be warned if you’re sent a link to this site – someone’s probably making fun of you!
Google has changed the way we view information, and to put it simply, Google has developed a mentality (amongst those who have grown up with Google) that ”If it doesn’t exist online, it doesn’t exist.” If you need to find something – search Google. If you can’t find it – revise your keywords. If you still can’t find it – it doesn’t exist.
Now of course, that’s not (always) true, but that’s the way that information is now viewed.
Have you ever had this thought: “I’m sure I read about topic X in publication Y.” But you can’t remember which issue, so you flick through every single one! I remember doing this with The Briefing in years past – I knew I’d read about a particular issue, but which issue?!
The generation that has grown up with Google expect to find what they’re looking for on Google. If they search for it and can’t find it, it might as well not exist. (An interesting sidenote: a recent study revealed how much trust children now place in what they find online. Read more here).
What does this mean for churches?
If your church doesn’t have a website, it doesn’t exist.
If your church has a website but it’s not easy to find (using the keywords most visitors would use to find your site), it doesn’t exist.
If your church promotes an event in the community, but it can’t be discovered online, it’s not happening.
This 3-minute film “retells the the birth of Christ via social media tools like Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube as if it were experienced in 2010.”
It’s been viewed more than 9 million times. Have you seen it?
The video was created by a Portugese ad company, in an effort to show their clients what is possible with video, and the potential of viral videos. They certainly achieved that – and have received a lot of business as a result! You can read more about the story behind video here. A similar video was created by a Christian agency – ‘Social Network Christmas‘.
I’m aware of the main objection Christians would have with this video – it explains the ‘what’ of Christmas, but doesn’t explain the ‘why’. I see this too, but to be fair, this wasn’t their intention in creating the video. What this video does highlight for us is the potential of this form of communication. This video spread like wildfire (‘virally’) for five reasons:
it was short (it’s easy to spare 3 minutes to watch a video online).
it was easy to share (sharing a link to a video is a skill children are now born with!).
it was timely (distributed at a time when people are open to thinking about Christmas).
it was relevant (it used illustrations that recent generations are familiar with).
it was engaging (it was fast-paced, interesting, and kept you engaged until the end).
Now, imagine if a similar video had been created that also explained the ‘why’ of the Christmas message. What an effective commuication piece, to share with 9 million people why God came to dwell among us! Can you see the potential of creating a video like this? The genious in this medium is that it is now very easy to share content, and as I share with 10 friends, and those 10 friends share with 10 friends – the number of people exposed to the video grows exponentially. The best example in recent times is the video campaign by Old Spice – the main video has been viewed nearly 28 million times. You might also like to see a list of ‘top 10 most innovative viral videos of 2010‘.
Most of us don’t have the creativity or skills required to create a gospel-centred, engaging, interesting, shareable video like this. But praise be to God – the body of Christ is diverse and God has gifted us with some brilliant Christian video producers in Australia (I’ve listed several here). Let’s encourage these people – in word, in prayer, and also with our wallets, to continue to creatively communicate the gospel using their skills in video production.
What might this look like?
If the Portugese ad company had created the video for a client, they would have charged a flat fee of $50,000. At that price, for 9 million views, you’ve got $0.06 per view. That’s a pretty good return on investment, don’t you think?
So imagine if the Sydney Anglican churches each put in, and paid for a video like this to be produced. Using rough estimates, this would $186 per church or $125 per congregation – and obviously much less if other churches from different denominations and around the country also pitched in.
Seems like a small price to pay to make use of a far-reaching opportunity to share the gospel.
